We all want to help save our planet and as CIO’s we can make perhaps a bigger difference than most. This is because our world is very resource hungry. At the start of this year spare some time to think of how you can make a difference.
Here are five things you can do this year….
1. Switch.
Switch to sustainable and green energy. This is an easy one and makes a big difference. By switching to green energy for your offices, server rooms and data centres you reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions.
2. Reduce.
Use less energy. For example; data centres are often kept very cold and actually colder than they need to be with modern equipment. A change of 1 degree can make you significant power savings and still keep you within your manufacturer’s guidelines. Check out your average data centre or server room temperature and see if you can tweak it a little!
3. Change.
Change your procurement policies. Changing your equipment procurement policies to look for the greenest options in the IT purchasing can make a big difference. What are the most environmentally good servers, PCs, laptops and phones? By changing your estate over time, you help drive a reduced carbon footprint for your company and encourage manufacturers to become greener in their designs.
4. Cut.
As CIO you can ensure that collaboration tools are in place but perhaps more importantly used! By measuring the amount of travel, challenging it to see if it could be reduced and encouraging good teams/skype/conferencing etiquette you can directly reduce pollution and save your company some money in doing so!
5. Plant.
The average cost of a PC or laptop can vary depending on the type of use but for arguments sake if we assume £500 per user then adding a commitment to plant a tree for each desktop deployed would only add approx. £7 per desktop and give you tremendous green credentials and probably improve user satisfaction with IT!
